Marathon morons

This past Monday, I watched most of the Boston Marathon from Washington Square in Brookline. I say most, because I didn't go to see the elite runners go by (I don't know anyone from Kenya) and occasionally I stepped away to grab a beer, which we were allowed to drink outside.

I haven't watched the Marathon live in a few years, since my older brother ran it. This time around, my little brother was running, and a friend of mine. I was tracking both of them via text alerts, and relaying the information to family and friends. I had everyone looking out for my brother, so we could cheer him on as he neared the finish line. I was excited and proud of all of these people in something for which the word "race" doesn't do justice. On top of that, I am running the Providence Marathon in less than two weeks. I was excited, and nervous watching.

And annoyed. There was an epidemic of people trying to cross the road during the event. The Boston Marathon is not exactly a surprise to anyone who lives in Boston, and it shouldn't even be a foreign idea to those outside the city, considering it is one of the "Big 5" marathons. I myself did have to cross the road at a point during the race, just once, to get to friends and beer. I am pretty quick and agile (I had better be if I'm supposed to run a marathon in 10 days). Even so, I waited until there was a lull in the race and the police officers on duty at the crosswalks.

The three runners up for top offender were: the Asian tourists with a heavy camera who scurried slowly across, holding hands; the two people who crashed into each other in the middle of the road; finally, the woman running across the street with a child in her arms.

The biggest idiot of the day, however, was the woman who tried to cross the street in the middle of a pack of runners, while pushing...a baby stroller. The police officer on that corner chewed her out and rightfully so.

What the ef is wrong with people?

There is a marathon going on. Thousands of people are running 26 miles. In a row! They are doing something that most people couldn't dream of doing. It takes physical fitness, stamina, mental strength, training, dedication, and perseverance that few people have. Show some respect and wait! Where are you and your baby going that is so damn important you can't wait a few minutes to let these people complete one of the most significant things they may ever do, without some idiot pushing a stroller through to throw off their time.

Beyond respect, show some common sense. People running the marathon- not slow. 50 Speedy Gonzales's are coming your way when you cross that street. If you don't get out of their way, the impact will be significant. What if while walking across the street, you caused injury to a runner? Also, worst parent ever! "Oh, I think I'll just take my baby across the street and-" oh your baby just got run over! Your baby's probably dead. These people have been running for 23 miles at this point. It has taken them over 2 and a half hours. Many of them have not stopped, and they're not going to do that easily.

As the stroller pusher, you have shown that you are a complete moron, waste of space, and probably shouldn't have kids. Under your supervision, given the care and decision making skills you've shown, they won't last long in this world anyways, especially considering what a daredevil you decide they will be on their behalf, playing chicken with a wall of elite runners.

I was glad to see that people booed the idiots for crossing the road whenever they felt like it. I am a fan of booing when people deserve it. The thing that sucks is that people running the marathon had to hear something so negative when all they should be hearing are cheers and well wishes and admiration.

Maybe instead of booing there should have been angry, but quiet, mob justice.



"Thank you, logic boy. Did I mention this is a rant? Sense really has no place in it."-BtVS

Adventureland

“It was the worst job they ever imagined... and the best time of their lives.”

The poster for Adventureland itself is misleading; in bold letters, it boasts that the movie is from the director of Superbad. I actually didn’t care for Superbad, but it would lead one to believe this is going to be a gross out, fast paced, joke every 10 seconds comedy, which it isn’t. Bill Hader, Kristen Wigg, and Ryan Reynolds all promise potential for big laughs. Hader is funny, especially in a scene where he chases a man with a baseball bat, and then goes back to his task as if nothing happened. His funny moments are too few and far between. Wigg, who is the best thing to happen to "Saturday Night Live" in years, is completely underutilized and barely speaks in her few minutes on screen. Hader and Wigg's characters belong in a better, screwball comedy. Reynolds plays a completely phony douche bag, with none of his Van Wilder Charm. We don’t laugh with him or at him.

The tagline featured on the movie poster doesn’t really suit the film. Working in this amusement park is not “the worst job.” I definitely felt worse for Christina Applegate at her summer job cleaning out the grease traps and mopping the floor in the clown burger joint in Dont' Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead. And as far as the best time of their lives…the rest of their lives must be pretty weak.

The movie is set in the late ‘80s, which has no effect on the story except for some of the fashion (which is pointless since teenagers now wear ‘80s inspired crap) and featuring some obvious and a few forgotten ‘80s songs. James Brennan (Jesse Eisenberg) had plans to travel to Europe and go to graduate school at Columbia. His father’s demotion forces him to forget those plans and instead get a job to save money to move to New York. Having no real work experience, the only thing he can find is working the games at the amusement park with the locals. Once there, he quickly falls for Em (Kristen Stewart), who is sleeping with the married maintenance man (Reynolds). Throw in the hot girl, the childhood friend who regularly punches James in the balls, the nerdy, atheist, Jewish sidekick, and the cast is complete. The story is predictable right up to the end: realization, confrontation, rumors, breakdowns, and happy ending.

There are about 20 minutes of a decent film here, with many long, uninspired scenes filling in the gaps. Jesse Eisenberg is good, but he is too similar to Michael Cera, that I spent the whole time wishing that his character were played by Cera. Kristen Stewart is much better here than in Twilight, in which her performance convinced me she couldn’t act. The film could have been a lot funnier. Without the laughs, the story isn’t compelling or unique enough to make a good movie.

Rating: 4/7

Beard-off III: The shave-off

“Did you lose the beard off?”

I have heard that from about 10 people since the end of the contest.

“Why does everyone assume I LOST?”

Most have said, “Because you don’t have a beard.” For some, I think that really is why they think I lost. For others, I think they underestimate me. They think I didn’t have it in me to win. I had it in me, and more to spare.

The beard-off started friendly enough. The contestants had, after all, gone in unknowingly. The beards existed before the competition. It was never about the beards. There was money at stake too, but it was never really about the money. The winner may not even try to claim the money. Well, maybe the winner will try to claim the monetary value of the cash prize in food and beer payments.

It was about winning. The beards looked good. Both contestants were constantly complimented on them. Before the end, there were two beard camps; maybe four. Some liked my beard better. Some crazies liked Chris’s better. Some thought I would win. Some foolishly thought Chris would. Some probably lied to our beard-faces about what they thought. Preference for one contestant’s beard had no bearing on who would prevail.

Six weeks past and both contestants had official beards. They were crossing the threshold from clean cut toward Joaquin Phoenix’s current facial growth, and in desperate need of trimming. No trimming allowed.

At the beginning, I think most people had faith in me over Chris, knowing, correctly how stubborn I am. I made it quite public to everyone that even though I grow a beard for a couple weeks from time to time, I hated the current reddish mess on my formerly youthful face. To my former supporters, this seemed like a sign of weakness in their champion. They forgot that I’m stubborn, but I’m also underhanded.

Chris knew it was coming to an end. I wanted out. He wanted out. At one point, he offered a truce- we would both just shave over the weekend and tell everyone we gave up. My public display of weakening brought his out privately, away from the arena of work.

“Well,” I told him. “I’m going to a party tonight and I kind of want to show off the beard. You can shave if you want to.” He was too smart for this (it wasn’t a very good attempt on my part). “Don’t try to win through trickery.”

On the way to the party, a drunken woman in a liquor store asked how old my friend Courtney is. She told her, “28.” I was standing behind Courtney in line and from behind me, I heard the woman ask me, “Is that your daughter?” Even though she was an old drunk hag, I turned around in full sass mode and said, “Do I LOOK like I could have a 28 year old daughter?!”

That made my estimated age in that woman’s glassy eye probably about 50. Nice. Yes, she was drunk and crazy. The point is: I was sick of the beard making me look any older.

The next day I sent Chris a text with a picture of my face without a beard. A short while later, he did the same from his phone to mine. It was over.

It wasn’t until we saw each other the next day that the winner became the loser. The picture I sent was from 2 weeks before the beard off began. No, I don’t sit around taking pictures of myself on my phone. I had sent a picture to my friend when I dyed my hair darker so she could see it.

One more picture marked the official end of the beard off: Chris with his clean-shaven face and me with my beard at the height of its craziness.

A few people have called what I did cheating. The picture was sent without any text. I knew exactly what it implied, and allowed my opponent to jump to a conclusion. His trust (ahem, weakness) led to my victory.

“You cheated.”
“I used trickery. I would have outlasted you. I just wanted to end it quicker. Did you really think you were ever gonna win?”

I shaved later that day.

Unable to deal with our naked faces, we both started growing beards again immediately.

Friday the 13th

This past weekend was Valentine’s Day. That wasn’t until Saturday. I have nothing to celebrate for Valentine’s Day, but I’m not the type to sit around and mope about being single, or have an “F Valentine’s Day Party.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that, any excuse to have a party is okay by me. This weekend for me was Friday the 13th weekend. There are actually three this year (the most there can be in a calendar year), but this one was extra special because it brought us the remake of the deranged mother of modern slasher films: Friday the 13th. I wasn’t even given any pity Valentines this year. On Facebook, I received a Victims of Jason Voorhees gift.

Unlike the original Friday, Jason is the silent stalker in this film, not his vengeful mommy. Her part of the story is covered during the credits as she faces off with the only survivor from the first massacre. Inexplicably back from the dead, Jason witnesses Pamela Voorhees get decapitated. Even though out of the 11 films in the series (including the Freddy crossover) Mrs. Voorhees only appears in the original, the character deserves a little more attention. Jason has constantly been tricked and influenced by imitations or mentions of his mother. The heroine of Friday the 13th Part II wore her years-old blood stained sweater to convince Jason to stop. Freddy used her to essentially reduce Jason to the scared 10 year old boy he really is. Even in the remake, one of the characters looks like Jason’s mom and it may save her life. Given this acknowledgment, and the fact that the hundreds of people Jason has killed or will kill are all for his mother, she should have been given a prologue, not clips during the credits.

For the most part, this is a remake of the original four Fridays, ending with "The Final Chapter." Part I is covered during the credits, and II, III, and IV (which in the original series supposedly took place over one weekend) cover the rest of the film. Plotlines and references from these films do make it into the remake, which made this horror junky happy. Jason wears the white hood for his first attacks, until he finds his iconic hockey mask in a barn. Jared Padelecki plays Clay, who is looking for his missing sister Whitney, just as Rob was in "The Final Chapter." At least in this film the plot makes more sense, as Whitney has been missing for a month, not two days. Of course, there are teenagers camping and on the quest for sex in-tents sex (see what I did there?) and wild marijuana, and another group of teens in a beautiful lake house. No tents for them. And they already have the weed. The good thing about this is, the body count is high at 13.

There are promising elements in this remake. Some of the first deaths involve a bear trap and a girl stuck inside a sleeping bag, which Jason has hung from a tree over a campfire. I thought, and possibly whispered, “This Jason is sick!” It makes sense that a deranged, deformed, reanimated orphan who lives alone in the woods would make intricate traps and long, painful deaths for his victims. We also see Jason’s underground lair, where he stockpiles random items (being a packrat is his first hobby before murder), and even has a bell connected to trip wires so he knows when someone is on his turf. His lair could have been much scarier, and it would have been interesting to see a few shots of Jason spending time in there.

The rest of the film has a few funny moments and does build up the suspense more than the older movies. The big item in the minus column is that the deaths themselves are pretty standard- ax to the back, arrow through the head (and there is a bug zapper that could have played in so nicely and is left unused). Of course, a few people are dispatched with the machete, but that’s a classic and you can’t take that away from Jason. Even if you did, he would get it back and lop your head off. The new Jason of the first few minutes- twisted, vengeful, clever- spends the middle of the film boring the audience to death until the final showdown. The showdown is not the greatest fight for our favorite pissed off goalie, or the beautiful teenagers we’ve grown to hope don’t get murdered, but it does keep you guessing what’s going to happen. One character I thought would make it to the end bites it with 10 minutes to go, so I award bonus points for shock value. I don’t think I am ruining anything when I say it has the standard could-have-a-sequel horror movie ending. With Jason, who has been burned, hanged, buried, hacked with a machete, drowned, cryogenically frozen, blown into hundreds of flesh bits, and impersonated by an angry local, there could always be a sequel. Overall, it doesn’t reinvent, explain, or improve much so it is just unnecessary. For the die-hard horror fans, I would say go see this because it is still entertaining.

Rating: 5 out 0f 7

Valentine's Day: Surprisingly Not So Bad

I’m not one of those girls who wears black around Valentine’s Day (in fact, I am currently sporting a red t-shirt that says, fittingly, ‘I’m with Cupid,' essentially the best play on words in t-shirt form of all time in the history of time) or curses the ‘man’ for creating such a hallmark holiday that preys on the fragile emotions of 20 plus single people who live alone, sans cats might I add.

No, I didn’t have any real plans, but I am not bitter. I spent it doing everything every single girl ever pictured in a movie would have done had a day in their chick-flick-world been Valentine’s. I stayed in and watched not one, but two movies that involved loved ones with Leukemia. I cried my eyes out while junking on potato chips, sour patch kids, and cookie dough. Add to that Vodka and Chaka Khan and you’ve got the first scene of Bridget Jones. You can call this my diary.

Truth is, in a secretly sadistic way, I love Valentine’s Day. It’s the one day I can wallow in self pity on being single/having no one who loves me and no one stops me. I can wear red and pink with a purpose. I can admit to ridiculous fantasies that my secret admirer (I have one, don’t even deny it, he’s just shy) is going to show up on my doorstep with a single red rose (or better, a bouquet of tulips, my favorite) and take me out on the most romantic night of my life. When that doesn’t happen, I can just eat more cookie dough.

It turns out- the day most single people groan about, dread, contemplate curling up under a rock during, isn’t so bad after all. I got through it, I survived. I do have one gripe, however. That the word 'Valentimes' which refers to the ‘Times’ you had on ‘Valentine’s Day’ never gets used around me again. I will punch anyone who says to me, “How were your Valentimes?” Don’t test me.

Jewsus

"Jesus was Jewish."
"Yeah, until he started believing in himself."

He's Just Not That Into You

When I first saw previews for He’s Just Not That Into You, I wondered: why are so many big name actors in this so-so looking movie? I thought maybe, just maybe, it could be a not-quite-as-good Love, Actually. It wasn’t.

The movie opens with a scene in which a mother consoles her daughter who has just been yelled at and pushed by a boy at the playground, by telling her he did it because he likes you. Soon follows a montage of women in bars, in sororities, in a military boot camp, and even in a small African village telling their friends the many reasons men don’t call back is that they are either insecure, intimidated, or perhaps lost their “hut number.” Or is it, as the title proposes that He’s Just Not That Into You?

The story focuses on four women at different stages of the game. Mary (Drew Barrymore) is dating in the technological age when she can find time- on Myspace, through texting, and getting messages on her cell phone and her work phone. Her storyline could seem overly cutesy, but her role is small and it’s genuinely funny when she complains about how exhausting it is to be rejected through all these media.

Gigi (Ginnifer Goodwin) is doing everything the old fashioned way- yes she cyber stalks, but she mainly stalks in person, and does “drive-bys” to bars where she might run into certain men. Even with a cell phone and internet access, Gigi waits around her apartment on weekends wondering why her pink, corded house-phone (I didn’t know anyone still had house phones besides my parents and grandparents) isn’t ringing after a guy said he would call. Maybe because he said “It was nice to meet you” at the end of the date. While she may not be techno-savvy, she does gain some insight on men from Alex (Justin Long), even if she is misreading the signs he sends her.

Beth (Jennifer Aniston) is waiting for Neil (Ben Affleck) to propose marriage after 7 years of dating and living together. When he tells her that is never going to happen, she dumps him. I found Beth to be the most likeable character in the movie because she is the only one not screwing anyone over or being screwed over. Beth spends the majority of the movie getting insults and sympathy from her family and taking care of her father after he has a heart attack. The closest thing she has to a date is getting hit on by a male Wiccan at her sister’s wedding, so it’s no surprise that she ends up back with Neil.

Janine (Jennifer Connelly) and Ben (Bradley Cooper) are a married couple in the middle of a house renovation. This renovation is the latest distraction in a failing marriage, which is based on Janine giving Ben an ultimatum- we get married, or we break up. Janine has given up on sex in her marriage and admits she is not as fun as she was at the beginning of the relationship. Janine learns late in the game that her husband is not that into her, and has to start all over again. Connelly has one of the best scenes in the movie as Janine finally makes a decision, and starts throwing Ben’s stuff out of the finished house and smashes a mirror to pieces. Her obsessive-compulsive side kicks in, and she immediately begins sweeping up the mess and leaves her husband’s belongings in a neat pile on the staircase.

The last “couple” are Conor (Kevin Connolly) and Anna (Scarlett Johansson), who are friends with benefits, only they’re not really friends, and there aren’t really benefits. This is the case where she is not into him. Conor never returns Gigi’s calls because he is too busy trying to get something more out of Anna. Meanwhile, Anna is chasing after a career by way of a married man, Ben.

This role-reversal points out what this movie could have used- a little more diversity in the storyline and cast. The movie features four white women with different views and approaches on dating, sex, and love and their white, male love interests. That has been done on “Sex and the City” (yes, I know the movie is based on the book from a line of an episode of SATC). When a black coworker of Alex’s says “Day-amn,” followed by nothing, I can’t help but think of Malik in Not Another Teen Movie saying “I am the token black guy. I'm just supposed to smile and stay out of the conversation and say things like: ‘Damn,’ ‘Shit,’ and ‘That is whack.’”

There are also gay characters, but they are there to comment on their own erections at the office and to teach Mary that Myspace is the new booty call. Conor, while trying to woo the gay crowd for his real estate business, learns that gay signals are different from straight signals: a three second stare means “I want to sleep with you,” anything less than that means “I’m not interested.” Because, gay people are all about one thing and none of them have complex relationships and dating problems?

Overall, this movie is watch-able, but not at all memorable. The actors all do a fine job, but no one stands out. There is some funny dialogue, but no great one-liners. I give it a 4 out of 7. I would give it 5, but…I’m just not that into it.

Rating: 4 out of 7